Canadian aerospace firm Bombardier Inc on Thursday said it was selling its plant in Northern Ireland, which produces wings for Airbus SE aircraft, as part of a reorganization of the business.
“As the company moves to optimize its global manufacturing footprint, Bombardier will pursue the divestiture of the Belfast and Morocco aerostructures businesses,” the company said in a statement. “These are great businesses with tremendous capabilities,” the Montreal-based firm said.
The company, which axed 490 people in Belfast last year as part of a global cost-cutting drive, is one of Northern Ireland’s biggest employers with about 3,600 staff.
“We understand that this announcement may cause concern among our employees, but we will be working closely with them and our unions as matters progress, and through any future transition period to a new owner,” it said.
Michael Mulholland, an organizer for the GMB trade union, demanded “reassurances” for workers.
“Our members — and their families — have already suffered a terrible year,” he said. “Bombardier jobs are absolutely vital to Northern Ireland’s economy and it’s time workers were treated with the respect they deserve.”
The sale of the Belfast facilities was also deeply concerning to Michelle O’Neill, new leader of the Sinn Fein party, who said that the news added to economic uncertainty caused by Brexit.
Previously the company decided to give up control of its new C-series aircraft, now known as the A220, to Airbus in exchange for using Airbus’ sales and marketing heft to lift sales.
Since then Bombardier — which has 68,000 employees worldwide — has refocused on business aviation and in particular on its new Global 7500.
David Coleal, the head of this division, is to lead the new Bombardier Aviation division, which is to have its business concentrated in Montreal and Mexico, as well as in Texas for the wings of the Global 7500, the company said.
Bombardier almost quintupled its net profit to US$239 million in the first quarter, after revising down its profit targets for this year last week.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day